First Hands-On Details for Bungie’s New Game ‘Destiny’

It’s been several years since developer Bungie revealed they would be leaving their beloved Halo franchise behind and beginning a partnership with Activision, one that would supposedly deliver a new shooter series dubbed Destiny. After that initial announcement, though, Bungie went almost completely dark, and haven’t revealed much about the game since.

However, a recent visit to Bungie by several employees for the company Demonware has revealed a few additional details about Destiny, namely a confirmation of its sandbox elements and a confirmation it shares a lot in common with the Halo franchise. There was talk of co-op, but not in the traditional sense. In fact, it actually sounds like Destiny could draw a lot of inspiration from the MMO market.

These select few Demonware team members were only granted exclusive access because their company will be providing and maintaining the servers for Bungie. Unfortunately, the full post from the Demonware employee has since been pulled down, but thankfully Kotaku was able to pull some choice quotes from the piece, and were tipped off to its existence by super sleuthing Superannuation.

Bungie set up a pretty sizeable presentation for the Demonware’s visiting employees and provided closer looks at “game story, factions, art, engineering, tool chain, graphics, audio, player investment mechanisms, player progression, UI and web and mobile apps” before letting them get some hands on time with the game.

Here are some of the unnamed employee’s general thoughts:

“This is not a dedicated server game, but there is some simulation and coordination running in their server infrastructure. The game was up and down a lot, playing in a team of 3 we did manage to experience entering a zone to find other players already taking on the bad guys, it’s cooperative so we helped out (mostly [name removed], I just died) before both groups went their separate ways. Which is a pretty cool experience, making you feel you are part of a much larger populated world.”

“…At the end of the day I was excited about the game, I like the feel of being in a large world with different destinations and the interactions along the way. It actually brought back a sense of exploration I recall from playing [Elite] many years ago, although there was no opportunity to shoot aliens in the face in Elite. I’m not fully sold on the appeal of being able to change the colour of a weapon, but I guess it works in China, and customization and individual identity is a big theme for the game.”

It’s not all that easy to decipher the employee’s description, but he did conclude that Destiny is “still quite like Halo.” Whether that is in terms of both gameplay and design is unclear, but we can’t imagine Bungie would want to copy their previous efforts whole cloth. Moreover, the explanation of the server infrastructure suggests that Demonware will have their work cut off for them when supporting Destiny. Obviously, it’s hard to judge a product based on a few paragraphs, but what details there were sound intriguing.

Destiny is planned for a 2013 release — with a presumed debut during the Spike VGAs later this year — but beyond that details have been hard to come by. After a cryptic tease from Bungie this is the first substantially detailed description we’ve received regarding Destiny, but it’s unfortunately hard to decipher.

Nonetheless we anxiously anticipate an official reveal for Destiny and hope that isn’t just a retread of Halo‘s tropes, but is a completely new and exciting experience.

What do you think of Destiny based on this brief description? Does it sound like Bungie is taking a sizeable risk?

i think the game looks great but im concerned with the server due a non-dedicated server the game will lag very badly andwill have major connection and loading issues.i hope they changy thier minds on that choice,itll hurt the game and sales and have major returns.